The Old Folks Told Me
by Kelly Gray

The rocks were made by mountain people
and the mountain people were made by
rocks and in the rocks they kept the snakes.
Across the road, in the field of pennyroyal,
​black birds lift to take their places
along the fence line
while I call you towards me
so that I can turn you away.
When I am sick of driving,
I pull over and stand before the rocks.
One of the snakes is streaked lantern red,
it is thin and shoulderless.
I burn under the sun
into a smaller version of myself.
There is an old snake song
that was taught to the grasses
that I do not know.
The grasses hiss and shimmy
in the breeze. Maybe one day
I will ask you to teach me this song.
If we had had a child,
this is the lullaby we would sing.
This is the road we would drive.
Instead, I crawl from the hot rocks
into the damp earth
while your fatherhood lifts
into the willow grove
and is gone. 

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Kelly Gray is the author of Instructions for an Animal Body (Moon Tide Press, 2021), The Mating Calls//of the// Specter (Tusculum Review Chapbook Prize, 2023), Our Sodden Bond (MAYDAY Chapbook Prize, 2025), and Dilapitatia (Moon Tide Press, 2025). Her poems have appeared or are forthcoming in Ploughshares, Cherry Tree, ZYZZYVA, Cream City Review, ANMLY, and Witness Magazine, among other places. Gray lives with her family in a cabin in the woods and in addition to her four other jobs, teaches poetry in rural public schools.